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Thread: Hunting: Processing on your own or going to a butcher?

  1. #11
    Site Supporter
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Mississippi
    I do both. I do most of my game myself. I figured it out over a couple decades of cutting up my own deer. Now I’m doing my own elk and caribou. I usually kill one whitetail each year, keep the backstraps and tenderloins. Then I take the quarters to a game processor for jalapeño and cheddar sausage. I have my own electric grinder because my family mostly eats ground meat (burgers, tacos). Then I keep large roast pieces for crockpot roasts. That’s honestly my favorite way to eat my game. My wife has several great roast recipes.

    I second the Victronox knives. They are cheap off Amazon, cut well, and sharpen easy. I do a double layer freezer paper wrap, only because I don’t have a vacuum sealer (I really should get one).

    For your first deer or two- I’d recommend taking it to a processor. You should be able to find a processor that will take quarters in game bags (I’ve had good luck with the Caribou brand bags). Over time you can learn how to break them down yourself. For me the most enjoyable part is doing everything from the shot to the table. It’s important to remind ourselves and especially our children that meat doesn’t come wrapped in plastic from the meat isle at the grocery store.

  2. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Matt O View Post
    I process/butcher the deer myself, but I have taken it to butchers in the past. My primary motivation for originally starting to do it myself was A) the excessive cost to butcher the deer and B) the fact that I could control the entire process and what cuts I wanted since most butchers here just run the hams through a bandsaw a bunch of times and call that "steaks".

    FYI, I have a truck now, but I stuffed deer into the back of a Honda Civic (wrapped in a tarp) for years before I upgraded to a truck, so where there's a will, there's a way.
    How far were you driving and was keeping it cool a problem? I’ve thought about stuffing the chest cavity with ice bags, but I’m afraid even in a tarp it’ll make a big mess when it starts melting.

  3. #13
    Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2015
    Location
    The great N.W.
    I have always done it all myself. My family seems to enjoy ground venison more than steaks these days so I pretty much only keep loins and backstraps for steaks, a couple big roasts for jerky and grind the rest with 10-15% beef fat or bacon. This was the first year I took an animal (I'm usually not a huge fan of plain bear meat) to a processer and it was awesome, we had her make two kinds of brauts, breakfast sausage, summer sausage and three flavors of pepperoni sticks. Well worth the money if you don't feel comfortable doing it. Around me you can save a lot of you skin and bone first.

  4. #14
    Site Supporter Matt O's Avatar
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    Feb 2011
    Location
    TN
    Quote Originally Posted by Mitch View Post
    How far were you driving and was keeping it cool a problem? I’ve thought about stuffing the chest cavity with ice bags, but I’m afraid even in a tarp it’ll make a big mess when it starts melting.
    About an hour or so in the car. If you've properly field dressed and it's not hot out, I don't even bother with ice and just drive it straight back home to skin/process. In hot weather, as long as your state doesn't require retaining evidence of sex or explicitly forbid this, you can also just do the gutless method in the field. If you're already going to the trouble of quartering the animal, there's no point in paying a butcher to process it when you've already done half the work.

    My process is basically field dress, toss it in the back of the vehicle (wrapped if inside a trunk), take it back home where I hang, skin and quarter the animal. Backstraps, tenderloin, heart, etc., all get bagged up (or eaten) right away.

    Quarters and miscellaneous parts go into 1-2 coolers on cookie racks which are sitting on top of frozen gallon jugs of water. This is better than bagged ice because they don't melt as easily and you don't have to deal with water directly on the meat, etc. The idea is to rapidly cool the meat down and allow rigor mortis to pass before you process each cut. If you have a garage and a spare fridge, that would probably be even more ideal, but I live in a townhouse which doesn't have that kind of space so I just use coolers.

    I usually keep the meat in the coolers for anywhere between 2-4 days depending on what I've got going on. I keep thermometers inside and just check the temperature once a day to make sure it's somewhere between 32-40 degrees. When I'm ready, process everything as you see fit, wrap in saran wrap, then butcher's paper, label and into the freezer it goes. Butchering is a great way to learn about all of the different cuts of meat and there are plenty of great how-to videos on youtube.
    Last edited by Matt O; 11-08-2020 at 09:57 PM. Reason: Apparently I can't spell properly tonight.

  5. #15
    I do my own. Over the years we have accumulated more stuff. We now have a Cabelas 3/4hp grinder, a sausage stuffer, a mixer, and a small commercial vacuum sealer. Basically all the stuff cost me what it did to process about two moose at a processor. Now we share it among my adult kids as well.

    Most of our processors do not guarantee your meat back and I'm not down with that.

  6. #16
    I'm in the both camp.

    Life is complicated. I'm fortunate enough to have private land to hunt on about an hour from the house. This means I can jet down there on a Saturday morning and hunt till noon, and still be back in time for some chores around the house and dinner with the wife. When the schedule is packed I tend to use a processor.

    Generally I'll try and have 1 or 2 deer processed per year which ends up being ground meat, sausage, and bone in steaks. I'll make sure I do at least 1 myself which ends up being primarily bone-in roasts.

    I've borrowed a grinder and done that part myself before. For the time commitment of rather have someone else do it. Same for cutting 1/2" steaks on a band saw.

    Another consideration is temp. It's been in the 70s here lately. Shot 2 bucks already and both went to the processor. I have no desire to butcher a deer in hot weather.

  7. #17
    I process deer myself, but they are generally killed with in 200 yards of the house. It can be warm in early archery season, but we have a second fridge into which I can put deer quarters.

    Elk go to a processor.

    I transport dead animals in plastic kiddie pool in the back of my truck. That way you arent dripping blood behind you and dont have to hose out the bed. Inflatable kiddie pools might be a better choice for wagons and suvs. I have seen dead deer in the back of a Prius in a kiddie pool.

    I second the recommendation of the Renella book. There are some lymph nodes in deer you want to make sure you pull out and not put in your grind as they taste narsty.
    I was into 10mm Auto before it sold out and went mainstream, but these days I'm here for the revolver and epidemiology information.

  8. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by cornstalker View Post
    I do it myself. I have taken a few in to pro cutters over the years with mixed results. I prefer to just do it myself. Cut up my first deer 33 years ago. I did it the hard way until about a decade ago when I had the fortune of cutting with a retired butcher. He showed me how to do it much faster with the same quality end result.

    We wrap the meat in plastic wrap, then freezer paper. It keeps two years easily that way.

    I used to rent a grinder. Finally ponied up and bought one this year.

    For knives, I used Victorinox and Russel. It's nice to have three or four boning knives, one large breaking knife, and sharpening steel. Another trick the butcher showed me was to wear a clean apron and to wipe your knife blade off on it frequently. When it feels like the knife is getting dull, a lot of times it is just fat plugging the blade.
    It's weird to quote myself, but I wanted to clarify something on the knives. Dexter Russell knives, (I went and looked and mine are actually branded "Dexter"), not A.G. Russell knives.

    The grinder I chose is also the Cabela's .75 HP Carnivore.

    Rinella's Hunting, Butchering and Cooking Wild Game is also a book worth having.

  9. #19
    I do not hunt much anymore. Years ago I enjoyed the time in the skinning shed, fresh tenderloin cooking on a wood stove in a cast iron skillet after a hunt enjoying a favorite adult beverage. Back then we could do a better job than any of the local processors and it was an enjoyable part of the hunt.

    Then I found a local butcher, both he and his dad have been doing it for years. I brought him the deer, field dressed and with in a week I would pick up a custom cut deer double wrapped in styrofoam packages all for about 50 bucks. It just was not worth it for me to do it any more.

    I still made some of my own sausages and jerky because I could get the exact recipe I wanted and the expense due to the time involved was considerably less.

    In any case anything I now want to keep for an extended time gets vacuumed sealed, wild game and fish as well as the prime cuts of meat we get from the store.

    What it boils down to for me, is what I want to spend my time doing.

  10. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Lester Polfus View Post
    I process deer myself, but they are generally killed with in 200 yards of the house. It can be warm in early archery season, but we have a second fridge into which I can put deer quarters.

    Elk go to a processor.

    I transport dead animals in plastic kiddie pool in the back of my truck. That way you arent dripping blood behind you and dont have to hose out the bed. Inflatable kiddie pools might be a better choice for wagons and suvs. I have seen dead deer in the back of a Prius in a kiddie pool.

    I second the recommendation of the Renella book. There are some lymph nodes in deer you want to make sure you pull out and not put in your grind as they taste narsty.
    That pool idea is genius. Thank you.

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